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Floyd Brown's Story

With an IQ in the 50’s, Floyd Brown, who can’t spell his own name, couldn’t have produced the confession that purportedly links him to a murder. He says the police pounded on a table and yelled at him until he signed it.

No physical evidence ties Brown to the crime, notwithstanding unethical police efforts to manufacture evidence against him.[More ...]

Brown's father and sister say investigators came six nights after Lynch's murder to question Brown and search his house. They assert that the investigators then took him to the white house where Lynch's blood still splattered the floor. "He told me they picked up a stick and tried to get him to hold it," Cash says. ...

The stick was used to beat Lynch to death. A palm print on the stick did not match Brown’s. More sophisticated testing could reveal whether Brown’s DNA is on the stick, but the stick can’t be tested because the police lost or destroyed it.

Without the stick or other samples to test for the murderer's genetic fingerprint, Brown is unable to defend himself, bearing the burden of a system that allows authorities to lose and even trash biological evidence. He is one of 141 inmates The Denver Post has found nationwide whose cases have been derailed because their evidence was lost, mishandled or destroyed.

Brown isn’t competent to stand trial, so he’s been confined in a mental institution for the last 14 years. Brown spent the time taking classes that required him to memorize basic facts about the criminal justice system, and was briefly declared competent in 1993. As his defense lawyers began preparing a defense, they discovered that the murder weapon, and most other physical evidence, was missing. Tests on Brown’s clothes revealed no blood. None of the fingerprints taken from the crime scene matched Brown’s.

The police detectives who obtained Brown’s confession are less than credible. Both were convicted of racketeering in 1998.

Here’s the kicker:

As [Assistant Capital Defender Mike Klinkosum] tells it, District Attorney Michael Parker's office last summer offered to credit Brown for time served. ....Parker told the court weeks later that Brown was "too dangerous to be on the streets."

Parker didn’t seem concerned about Brown’s “danger” when he offered a “time served” disposition. But Brown, unable to understand the offer, was again declared incompetent. He remains in confinement, and may never regain his freedom, thanks to the missing evidence. His problems have been compouned by a judge who concluded that the loss of the evidence did not show “bad faith” on the part of the police, even though the detectives made no effort to find it or to investigate the reasons for its disappearance. The same judge thought it “speculative” that the conveniently missing evidence would prove Brown’s innocence.

Brown wants his story told. It needs to be heard. It’s time to give this man’s life back to him.

Note: Floyd Brown's story is part of a larger series of investigative reporting into the plague of lost or destroyed evidence in criminal cases, collectively titled "Trashing the Truth," by reporters at the Denver Post. Accompanying video and links to all the stories can be found here.

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  • Display: Sort:
    Aside from (5.00 / 2) (#1)
    by Deconstructionist on Wed Jul 25, 2007 at 11:29:16 AM EST
     all the other appalling aspects of this case, one can't ignore the Catch-22 aspect.

      He can't stand trial or enter a knowing, intelligent and voluntary plea because he is incompetent, so unless the charge is dismissed he is subject to continued  involuntary commitment without a finding he is a danger to himself or others.

      This illustrates that any mentally incompetent person could be charged with a crime and then held indefinitely -- even when no reasonable person could believe the State could possibly convict given the evidence-- unless someone with authority acts in good faith.

     

    Motive aside... (none / 0) (#2)
    by jr on Wed Jul 25, 2007 at 01:19:46 PM EST
    ...when a sworn officer does something as heinous as attempting to frame someone for a crime, shouldn't that be grounds for charging him or her as an accessory after the fact and obstruction of justice (and if there are more than one, conspiracy)?  Is it already grounds for that, and DAs just don't pursue those cases?  

    Hell, I have to imagine that in a lot of municipalities it would be better politically for a DA to go after crooked cops than to tout a bogus conviction.

    why isn't missing evidence a crime? (none / 0) (#4)
    by lilybart on Wed Jul 25, 2007 at 02:51:46 PM EST
    Is there no clear penalty for mishandling evidence?

    And if the murder weapon is missing, shouldn't charges be dropped, just as they would be if the evidence was gotten illegally?

    Parent

    As many cases as I've heard of... (none / 0) (#6)
    by jr on Wed Jul 25, 2007 at 09:31:28 PM EST
    ...where officers mishandled forensic evidence and all that resulted was the jury included that fact in deliberations, I'm pretty confident mishandling evidence is a crime in and of itself.  I assume provable, intentional mishandling constitutes grounds for exclusion, but in some instances where it's hard to show a clear violations of generally accepted standards, or if said violations appear accidental, or if the standards are voluntary and not mandatory, I think the evidence remains admissible in many instances.  IANAL

    Parent
    make that "'ISN'T' a crime in and of..." (none / 0) (#7)
    by jr on Wed Jul 25, 2007 at 09:33:38 PM EST
    And there was a perfectly good "preview" button, too...{sigh}.

    Parent
    Hard Cases make bad law (none / 0) (#3)
    by diogenes on Wed Jul 25, 2007 at 02:36:30 PM EST
    Those on the criminal justice have always fought for the notion that those who are not competent to stand trial should not be put on trial.  The cost of leaving people in hospitals for years is borne by the government, and can only be done in felony cases (due to Jackson v. Indiana).  The likelihood of this happening is low; the danger of allowing an incompetent prisoner to be tried is higher.

    Every rule (none / 0) (#5)
    by Deconstructionist on Wed Jul 25, 2007 at 03:16:09 PM EST
     is capable of sometimes producing bad results and a low incidence of bad results is indeed not necessarily reason to change the rule.

      No rule needs to be changed here. The State either needs to voluntarily dismiss the case or a court needs to do it.

     Given all the very specific facts of this case, this particular defendant is being denied fundamental fairness and his due process rights are being violated.

      A case where a court could take the available facts and  make a finding either that a strong probability of conviction if a trial were held exists or that the incompetent  person was a present danger to himself or others and was subject to involuntary civil commitment might not present such a compelling due process case, but this one does.  

     

    Parent